Those He Could Have Loved
by claire sorrentino
Summary: Being a Turk has always meant giving some things up. Turks don't have normal lives and they certainly don't have normal relationships. Throughout the years there have been three women that Tseng could have loved. Tseng/Cissnei; Tseng/Aeris; Tseng/Elena. Rated T for violence and mild language.
1. Chapter 1: Rain

**Those He Could Have Loved**

**Chapter One: Rain**

Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. It danced in the city streets, beating a soft staccato rhythm as it cleansed the filthy Midgar streets. A woman huddled beneath the awning of a darkened doorway, her copper hair plastered to her face. The mud and blood on her dark blue pants was starting to wash out. Her lips moved, singing fragments of a lullaby she barely remembered.

In the pocket of her suit jacket, her phone rang again, the noise shrill and abrasive against the muted streets. She absently reached up, pulling it out and glancing numbly at the screen. _Tseng_ the display announced once more. She muted it, shoving it back towards her pocket. Her hands were trembling and it slipped, striking the ground and opening.

"Cissnei?" a tiny voice called. "Cissnei, where are you? Report."

She sank down, aware vaguely that she was now sitting in a doorway like a common vagabond. She picked the phone up, placing it to her ear. "Y-yes?" her voice was not steady.

"Where are you?" the speaker demanded, relief audible.

She murmured a line of the lullaby. – _All that's dead and gone in the past . . . tonight –_

"Cissnei!"

Her head snapped up, rain mingling with accidental tears. "I'm here." The rain's intensity increased, a fierce wind flinging it into her face like a thousand stinging needles. "Zack's dead – the army got him – so much blood. Blood everywhere. His eyes, Tseng, his eyes. All that light fading, fading, fading into nothing." - _dead and gone in the past . . . swore I'd never leave your side . . . —_

"Cissnei, it's okay. I'm coming to get you. Where are you?"

She pushed to her feet. "I couldn't find him. He's dead. Those letters . . . he'll never read them. His eyes . . . he didn't see me. He didn't see me." She hummed another line of the lullaby, then said, "Hojo did it. Ordered the army to kill him. Used him and then wasted him. I'm going to . . . get him." She dropped the phone, already too far from him to listen. Grief clouded her eyes, stopped her ears, numbed everything except the pit of impotent fury.

It wasn't supposed to hurt this bad.

The phone struck the street, screen cracking. On the other end, a man swore, snapping his own phone closed. He was dressed in an immaculate dark blue suit, his dark hair hanging loose for the first time since he was a child. He was the new Director of the Turks. All four of them. He couldn't afford to lose any of them.

He left the lights on in his new corner office, moving down the hallways to the elevator. His new keycard gives him access to every floor of the ShinRa building. He punched the number for the Science Department and rode the elevator. On the short ride he checked his gun several times, adjusted his tie, tightening it like a noose about his neck. No one liked the Science Department. No one liked Professor Hojo. Only a fool took either casually.

The elevator chimed with deceptive sweet tones as it slid open. Tseng stepped off without hesitation. He was a Turk and they do not show fear. They do not hesitate. They just do what has to be done. If that means they drink a bit too much hard liquor when "off duty," well, that's just the price they pay.

He showed nothing as he entered Hojo's laboratory. Hojo was there. The professor was reedy, with a paunchy stomach, and bird thin arms and legs. The man had a perpetual sneer on his face. He knew that he was brilliant and believed everyone else was inferior. One day Tseng prayed he'd be ordered to put a bullet in the scientist's head. It'd be fitting.

There was a metal table in the center of the room. It was shiny and looked cold as ice. The floor was shaped like a bowl made of bathroom tile with a large drain in the center and high powered hoses on the walls to wash away the blood.

There was a body on the table. Tseng pretended not to see it. He refused to recognize the spiky black hair, somehow already less than it was when the corpse was a person. The skin has the pallor of death. The blood coating it was already drying. Hojo leaned over him, ho-humming as he deftly desecrates his former experiment specimen's body.

Tseng cleared his throat.

Hojo looked at him and then started to laugh. The sound grated at Tseng's ears. Hojo held up a hand as if begging Tseng to stop telling a hilarious joke. Tseng forced his face to remain blank. Hojo finally calmed himself. "So the Turks manage to survive. Amazing how you simpletons linger. Good pets, the whole lot of you." He cackled a bit more, digging the medical knife into the corpse.

Tseng wanted to leave. He didn't want to see this. He only came to stop Cissnei. To make her see that it wasn't the place of the Turks to get revenge for fallen friends. He was going to tell her that Hojo was _not _to be touched. They were going to forgot that there was ever a member of SOLDIER that fought alongside them close enough to be a friend. No more brilliant blue eyes and endless energy. They would forget him. They would pretend not to know what made the SOLDIER's girlfriend cry. They would put the sealed box of letters into the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and never pull it out again.

But that was easier to do outside of Hojo's presence. It was different with a corpse on the table. It was different with the brilliant red of blood falling in a slow, steady drip to the sterile tile floor.

Tseng didn't know when he stepped forward, but suddenly he was right by the body. It didn't look the same: death a pale imitation of the living, breathing too vibrant SOLDIER. He touched Hojo's shoulder. No. He seized the professor's shoulder, spinning him.

"Hn?" Hojo sneered. "What is it?"

Tseng's voice was amazingly calm. "He was a friend."

"And now he's dead. Get your hands off me. I have research to conduct. Things so important that you could never even imagine."

Tseng's grip tightened instead. He could feel the tendons in the professor's shoulder start to pop. Hojo's eyes bulged. He was so arrogant. He could hardly believe that a Turk was attempting to mishandle him again. "Learn your place," he snapped. "The President won't like you interfering."

Tseng released him, turning away. His breath was coming a bit faster than he would like. In the distance the elevator chimed sweetly. He closed his eyes, taking a calming breath. He was a Turk. They didn't do this. He meant to apologize and then leave – find Cissnei and hold her until she could get her tears and emotions under control.

But when he faced Hojo again, he learned something new about the scientist. The man was insane. He was holding a handgun – a standard issue pistol – and it was aimed directly at Tseng's head. Hojo didn't even look concerned. His finger was tightening down on the trigger.

Staring down the barrel of a gun, Tseng felt his mouth go dry. It wasn't a particularly big gun, but at this range that would not matter. The opening seemed to widen, swallowing his entire world within the confines of that circle.

He could hear, like a cannon fired at close range, the first click of the gun as the trigger was tightened. The second click would result in an explosion. And in his death. Then that barrel spun away from him. He heard the gun explode as Hojo's finger finished its pull.

The bullet struck Cissnei in the chest, just a little higher than her heart. She fell back, droplets of rainwater flying from her body. The white of her dress shirt was suddenly red.

Her head struck the ground hard. She was dead before that though. He could see it in her eyes as her body crumbled. Nothing. No light. No soft surprise. He couldn't even see the grief he heard in her voice over the phone.

He remembered the first time he met her. She was young for a Turk, barely fifteen when she was first assigned to his unit. Her face was sweet and innocent nothing like the cold and calloused look most female Turks wore. Her first codename was Shuriken, after the large red weapon she chose to wield. Tseng had suggested a different name: Angel of Death. Because she looked like an angel to him. She didn't trust them at first, but the longer they were together, the more she did.

One night, after a particularly distasteful mission, she'd sat on the barstool between Reno and him. "One of these days, I'll tell you my real name," she promised. "When I know that I can trust you completely."

Reno had been offended and kept pressing her until she said her name was 'Cissnei.' That's how she'd lost the codename of Shuriken. She was part of his family, a real member of the Turks. Tseng's Turks were fucked up mentally, but they had each other and that was enough.

But before she went to find Zack, she'd said something that he'd never expected Cissnei to say. She wanted to find Zack because she hadn't told him her real name . . . Her real name wasn't Cissnei. He'd never known that. He'd planned on finding out. Eventually she would trust him enough, they would be close enough for the lies to fall like blood to the floor.

But not now.

He took the gun from Hojo's surprised fingers. "Get out," he said, voice low and dangerous. "Now." He wanted to kill Hojo, but he couldn't. If he did, Reno and Rude would suffer. Both stayed with ShinRa because of him. If he was careless, they would suffer.

Hojo whimpered, then fled. Tseng knelt beside Cissnei, closing her empty eyes.

To this day, he doesn't know what happened there. He'd gone there to save Cissnei and instead faced his own mortality. She still died. He doesn't know why. Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember why Hojo turned and shot her instead of him. Had she said something? Did she see him in danger and take the bullet with his name written on it? Had she seen him at all? Or was it just the ex-SOLDIER on the table?

He knew she loved Zack. It never bothered him until that moment. Had she died for him? Did she take that bullet because she loved him? Or was it simply because she didn't want to live without Zack?

He carried her body to the elevator, rode it to the lobby. He could hear a hush descend when he emerged, carrying his fallen co-worker like a new bride out into the city streets.

He buried her outside the city, someplace with a clear view of the night sky. He said no words to mark her passing because, without her name, the words had no meaning. He laid a single white rose on her unmarked grave and never went back.

**Author's Note:** Update is to fix some tense problems and a few misspellings that I thought I caught the first time through. Also, for those who are curious, the lullaby Cissnei was mumbling is called _Safe and Sound_ and is from the Hunger Games. uTube it if you're interested.

Special thanks to DreamsOfArchades for pointing out the tense changes =)


	2. Chapter 2: Sunlight

**Chapter Two: Sunshine**

Sunshine filtered between rotting timbers, illuminating the flowers and flower girl kneeling beside them. Tseng had seen this image a million times, watched her from shadows in silence. The first time he spoke to her was after Zack left. Her flower wagon broke and she collapsed in the park, thin shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs.

He didn't remember walking toward her, but he did remember the feel of her skin when he touched that bare shoulder. She'd looked up, eyes the color of grass flooded with water. "W-who are you?" she stammered, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

"A friend of Zack's," he said, forcing the words from his throat. He was supposed to be watching her – without any contact. "Tseng of the Turks."

She'd sniffed, then offered him her hand so he could help her up. Her white dress floated around her ankles. "Can you give him a message for me?" She was nothing special. A slender young girl with ordinary brown hair and green eyes. Her smile was shy, but infectious. Everyone who knew her was captivated. Tseng was no exception.

He took the first letter and opened it in the darkness of his office. Her words were light, cheerful, full of hopes and dreams. He placed a sheet of paper on his desk, pen poised to write the return letter from Zack. Because Zack wasn't coming back and that's what Turks did. They covered the Company's failures with eloquent lies.

He never gave Aeris the letter he penned.

She gave him another letter. Then another and another and another. One little letter after another. "Please, please get it to Zack," she would say. Sometimes when he would see her, tending the flowers, humming softly, she wouldn't ask about Zack. But most days she did.

He read the letters at first. He stopped with letter fifteen. He put them in a box in a false bottom to a desk drawer. Time trickled by so slowly. The days turning to weeks, which faded into months, which drifted into years. Aeris got taller and sadder. He didn't know when she stopped smiling when she saw him, but it happened all the same.

The day before Zack died she didn't even look at him when he entered the church. She recognized his footfall on the old wooden floor. Her fingers slipped amongst the flowers, sunlight glinting like diamonds on the petals. "Is Zack back from his _mission_ yet?"

Tseng frowned, trying to craft an answer. "No . . ."

"Oh, I suppose not. It's perfectly normal for a routine mission to last four years, right? Oh, and not just last four year, last four years outside of PHS range, right?" She angrily yanked a dying blossom from the earth, resisting the temptation to simply fling the blossom at him. She refused to look at him.

"Ms. Gainsborough."

"I thought I asked you to call me Aeris two years ago."

"Aeris." Her shoulders tightened when he said her name. She was the sweetest girl he knew, but her temper was notorious in the slums. When Aeris got mad, she got mad. Right now she was furious. "About ShinRa –"

"No. No. No." She stood up, stamping her foot. "I don't care about ShinRa. If ShinRa wanted me to come in, then ShinRa could grant me one stupid little wish."

Tseng looked down. "Zack's mission is . . ." He murmured. The rest of the conversation was lost to memory. The old arguments between them. Her wanting all the little details of Zack's disappearance. Him pretending the SOLDIER First was alive and well somewhere, working for the Company.

Then Zack was dead. Cissnei was shot by Hojo. Tseng sat in a new office – one with massive windows overlooking the lights of the city. The box of letters was on his desk. He didn't return to the slums to see Aeris, but from the reports, she was actively evading the Turks these days, hiding her activities. And she'd changed, burned her favorite white and blue dress and replaced it with a rose-pink dress. She'd picked up a cheap guard stick and divided her time between tending the flowers and beating up a back pew of the church with her weapon.

She sent Tseng a message, ordering him to lose her number, telling him she was deleting his. He broke the seal on the box. Lifted the first letter and reread it. Her handwriting was elegant, each stroke written without a care. _You've been gone a month_ . . . she wrote. _I miss you, and can't wait for you to return._ Several letters later, her tone was snarky. _What's with you? You didn't find a new girlfriend, did you? Because if you did, I'll start dating Tseng. He's a cutie, you know. You don't just leave your girl with a friend. _Eventually the letters were angry. And then apologetic. He found a flower pressed into one envelope. _Don't forget me, Zack_, Aeris wrote. The last ones had blurred ink, tear stains.

He folded them all, putting them away. His head throbbed. Then there was a flash behind him, a rumbling explosion. He didn't know it but it was the start of the end of ShinRa. A little over two weeks later, he got a personal call from the President to bring Aeris to Hojo and prove that the Turks were still worth leaving alive.

He found her in the gardens at her mother's house with a little girl he'd never seen before. The girl spotted him and quickly hid behind Aeris. Her big eyes watched him warily. Aeris met his gaze.

"It's time," he said simply.

"Leave her alone," Aeris said. He saw something flash through her eyes. Bitter resolve, tempered by loss. She was beautiful to him. A breath of life in the hell of the slums.

"Come with me without a fight, and she won't even make my report," Tseng said.

Aeris didn't hesitate. "I'll leave her with my mother. If that's alright."

She didn't look at him when they left the slums. But when he got a call from Reno to go to the support beam for the Sector 7 plate, she started getting alarmed. When they arrived, Reno looked like hell. He had several bullet holes in his suit and his shirt was stained red. But the job was done. Tseng's eyes narrowed at the terrorists on the platform. Hopefully without them AVALACHE would die out.

The original AVALANCHE had cost him too many Turks. And now they had come close to murdering another member of his family. That was unacceptable. He cast Full Cure on Reno as the younger Turk collapsed inside the helicopter.

Then Aeris flung herself forward, hollering something to the terrorists. Encouraging words. He knew then that she was lost to him, lost to ShinRa. She would never come quietly. She would fight him. Anger bubbled inside him, his collar felt hot. He didn't remember lifting his hand, but the next second he'd brought it across her face sharply.

The sound of his calloused palm connecting with her face reverberated in his ears. Her head snapped with the blow, blood blossoming at the corner of her mouth. The spot he hit her was angry red, already bruising. He said something, the words cold. Her eyes burned at him, full of resolve and anger.

It was something he couldn't take back. Striking her like that. Like his father had struck his mother when he was a child. The look on her face told him she wasn't broken. She was not like his mother, cowering in a corner or pushing her young son into the path of his father's drunken rages. She was strength incarnate. Pure and beautiful in her sudden hatred of him.

The plate fell and she wept. She wept for the dead. The people whose lives were crushed, whose bones shattered along with their hopes and dreams. There was no better life for anyone in the slums. Only the agony of being buried under tons of steel.

She never looked away from him though. When he left her with Hojo, she still glared. He could never forget that she would never forgive him. Her eyes promised he could never repent. When her terrorist companions were captured, she glared at him more. Aeris. His Aeris, lost in hatred for the first time in her life.

How could he explain it to her? How could he make it up to her? He didn't know what to do, so he did nothing. He focused on work, chasing Sephiroth across the continent. Sephiroth who should have stayed dead in Nibelhiem. It was too unfair for him to survive when Zack died.

He saw Aeris between. In the mines, where she was covered in dark dust, circles under her eyes. Resolve. That's what he saw in her eyes. She never flinched. He wanted to ask her forgiveness, but he was a Turk first. Without the suit, he would have nothing left.

When he stole the Keystone from them, she shook her head, disappointment evident. _You failed me_ her body language said. _Be a man, Tseng, not a petty criminal playing dressup._

Then he was at the Temple of the Ancients, inside those golden halls. In the darkness of the tomb, he thought of her. Sephiroth cut those thoughts short. Tseng didn't even see him move. One second the silver haired psycho was cackling over his insane plan. The next there was a piece of cold Damascus steel sliding through Tseng's chest like a hot knife through butter.

He felt the blade inside him, twisting as Sephiroth laughed. Then it was wretched out. He fell to his knees, coughing, blood bubbling from his lips. Sephiroth walked away, black cloak swirling at the edges of his vision.

Tseng put a hand on his chest, feeling the wound pulsing in time with his frantic heartbeat. Just above his heart. The lights in the golden chamber faded when Sephiroth left, plunging him into darkness.

He thought, for a second of Cissnei, singing softly in the rain.

He thought of Aeris, sunlight dancing in her eyes. Sunlight . . .

He was dying. He dragged himself to his feet, keeping one hand against the wall. He didn't remember reaching the top of the Temple, he was there maybe a second before the terrorists showed up. Or maybe he was there for hours, seconds, years. Time didn't make much sense.

Aeris was there. Framed in the fading daylight. Her eyes met his, her expression shuddered. He wanted to call to her, apologize for hitting her. Her fingers lingered near her cheek where he struck her. There wasn't a mark on her skin. She walked to a corner and averted her gaze.

Cloud took the Keystone.

Tseng dragged himself to a corner, suddenly unwilling to go into the fading light of day. Aeris didn't look at him when she stepped onto the platform. Cloud placed the keystone and she sank out of his life as the sun dipped below the horizon.

The terrorists walked by, wordless. The little ninja gazed at him with a thief's eyes, but she didn't touch him. She descended into the Temple with the old pilot. The so-called leader of AVALANCE grunted something about well-deserved fates and descended with some brunette girl. Tseng couldn't remember their names.

Finally there was just Valentine and Reeve. Tseng didn't expect them to stop. Reeve had stopped talking to him about the same time that Reno dropped the Sector 7 plate on all those civilians. Oddly it was Vincent who knelt beside him. "Is there anyone?" he asked.

Tseng shook his head. "No," he managed to say. He wanted to tell Vincent how important it was to keep Aeris safe. Zack had entrusted the task to him. But darkness clouded the edges of his vision, ate at his thoughts.

When he woke up, Meteor burned in the sky. Aeris was dead.


End file.
